Holidaze 2011

Hello All-

This 2011 Holiday season seemed to whiz by at incredible speed. Looking back at it brings a smile to my face so I'm guessing we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. Let me start this post off by wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year! 

Traditionally in my family we stay up really late the night before Thanksgiving and bake pies. This year was no exception. I had Steph and a few other family members over for the pie baking festivities.

notice how half of the crust has beautiful edges and the other half looks squampus... 

now guess which half Steph helped with.

Things started off slow but soon the evening turned into a party with everyone joining in the fun and being half awake. Notice the cans of mountain dew strewn all about the counters in various pictures.

So Much Baking!

In total I believe we made 8 pies. Two pumpkin, two lemon, two raspberry cream pies with oreo crusts, an apple pie and finally a chocolate silk pie.

A few of our finished products.

Steph finally left with a car full of pies around 3am. I slept a fair amount before waking up ready to do MORE cooking.

And now... Introducing Norbert!

and the story of when he meets Mr. King Kooker. 

Its a beautiful story that we shall call Thanksgiving!

Deep frying a turkey can be especially dangerous so do not attempt this unless you have watched the You Tube video of William Shatner explaining the dangers. Also, the video of Alton Brown is exceptional in teaching proper safety protocols. Most helpful however is a husband willing to do the dangerous part.

Turkey being fried in peanut oil.

Grandpa watching the turkey very closely... with a proper turkey watching beverage in hand.

Me all proud of my precious Norbert.

Christian forgetting to smile cause he was too excited about eating Norbert.

Playing with the newest addition to the Knight household. Meet Gris.

Liz whipping up the whip cream with a touch of bourbon added. I'm guessing not all of it ended up in the bowl.

Dinner was delicious! Don't you just love the individual cranberry sauces!

I only have a few pictures for Christmas...

Christian excited about his advent calendar...

and Christian putting together his Lego Millennium Falcon whilst watching Star Trek Enterprise in the background. He's such a cute nerd!

I really wish I had brought my camera to Sigurd Utah where we spent Christmas with Christian's Grandpa Brow. We had some late nights playing cards and laughing at each others stories. Liz pulled out all the stops making better then crack sweet rolls and several varieties of quiche. She also made super delicious spaghetti and meatballs and her famous Shwinenbird in a terracotta pot. My mouth is watering just thinking about how yummy it all was.

This finally brings us to the end of our Holidaze catch up post. Christian and I have decided that 2012 will be a very exciting year for us. To help this "resolution" along we've signed up to run a half marathon with some of our family and friends in April. We've purchased plane tickets to Thailand for May, and we also geared ourselves out with latest in Ski and Snowboarding essentials. Now if only it would snow we could tide ourselves over until May.